


A Simple Parley

by Nvos



Category: Marvel
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content, erotic comedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-07 11:32:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14670209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nvos/pseuds/Nvos
Summary: Loki cited having stayed weeks on Sakaar before Thor crashed landed. He did not, however, cite the details. These are the details; it was for the best.





	1. An Unstable Entrance

**Author's Note:**

> Or, a work describing the antics leading up to Thor's arrival on Sakaar, featuring the perspectives of God of Mischief himself and the first lost and the first found.

Out of everything, the God of Mischief thought a portal to land him into promptly a quagmire of belching scrap metal and waste ribbons happened to score rather low on the totem of expectations after being thrown from the antechamber of the Bifrost.  
  
Coming to with unknown wires in his hair and black oil like tar from nose to the rest of his body down, Loki’s first cognizant was maybe to wonder if anyone heard him shouting. The second time today he’d fallen from great places, with memory of the former making his lips split to gritted teeth. Insidious mortal sorcerers. Stupid, _horrible_ —his thoughts blazed freely now— _how could his brother blame him for this, how was **he** supposed to know they had a sister of whom was about to bring the end right to the heels of Asgard_ —  
  
—And then they reached a screaming halt, Loki’s eyes going wide.  
  
Oh, gods.  
  
A coarse, metallic whine blasted off the plain. Just ahead, the thunder of a crane.  
  
This was not Asgard.  
  
The ground beneath him rumbled and shuddered as if rippling with an earthquake. Loki scrambled to attention, clawing his way out of material he did not know what was nor wanted to guess at what could be, slipping off a precipice and running as far as his legs lagged from the expulsion would allow him for the whine collapsed, where he had landed now awash by another pelting heavy with _whatever_ that spewed forth from more portals in the sky.  
  
This was absolutely _not_ Asgard.  
  
Around then, marked by running and running and dodging pelting after pelting, that the stench finally reached Loki; by Hel what a _stench_ it was. Oddly, even as he managed to traipse his way through the dump such that he no longer had to wade and brisk around the peltings, the stench stayed steady, wrung around him like a vise. He glanced up to a patchwork sign that fluttered to life when he came close, a bright blue hologram that he read with thanks to Allspeak—  
  
‘ _WELCOME TO SAKAAR! Please note that the Grandmaster is not responsible for the loss of any belongings or limbs from the way down._ ’  
  
Loki realized he was what stank; gingerly, his eyes floated down.  
  
A long, long, _long_ trail of black-purple oil at his feet, stretching all the way back to whence he came. His face burned so hot, it could have been mistaken for Sol itself.  
  
It took that stench, _his_ stench (no matter how he tried to blame it on the oil), for what he was thinking to coalesce completely, the gravity of his situation now spelled out. He and Thor on the Bifrost. Hela sending Loki loose from the antechamber. Loki, then in the interdimensional jaws of a wormhole. Now, on some mystery scrapheap that said it was Sakaar centuries, millennia, Gods know how long away from Asgard. And, of course, he stank.  
  
A hooded figure passed him, gas mask closed on his direction. Another beside it said, “What’s with that guy?”  
  
The mask shook side to side. “Who cares. Isn’t the first time someone’s come to Sakaar screaming loud enough that the Grandmaster can hear ‘em.”  
  
“Do you think we should help him?”  
  
Loki was still screaming.  
  
“Uhh… what for?”  
  
“He’s pretty loud.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess he is…” The mask crept closer at an easy angle, the other one a step away. “Hey, buddy? What’s your problem?”  
  
_Screaming._  
  
“Do you understand us?” It turned back. “He doesn’t understand us. We should probably leave before a scrapper ship comes.”  
  
Then, silence—the masked figure felt five cold fingers on his shoulder, a voice cracking behind them.  
  
“Where,” it hissed, “Can I get this smell…” The fingers were like knives. “ _Off of me?_ ”  
  
Its partner chimed, “Oh, I guess you do understand us, and yeah, you stink. Well, there’s a pub up ahead. It’s got a hygiene place, you know—hey, guy? Where are you going? We aren’t done talking yet!”  
But Loki was long gone, his path still tracked by a line of oil.  
  
Reaching for its bleeding shoulder, the masked figure only shrugged. “Weird guy.”  


* * *

  
  
The smell lasted for three hours.  
  
Loki, never if not relentless, had muttered every curse known to Asgard and even a few of his own imagination, but at least (at least? _at last_ ) the smell was gone. He walked the center of a rowdy crowd as he pushed through the trough streets of Saakar, destination clear: towards whomever, whatever was in control of this backwater excuse for a “planet”.  
  
The rancor of the crowd was unavoidable to hear, Loki listening to moronic hollering and whooping in equal measure. To say it annoyed him understated just how much he despised everything to do with what had happened to him recently, but he would be no god of lies and all that is deceit if he couldn’t press on with a unaffected facade—however much it tried his treasured patience.  
  
He heard something to do with a contest of champions. He also heard something to do with someone’s member and how it was taller than a house. Disseminating what was useful and what wasn’t was, unsurprisingly, difficult.  
  
His mind wandered again to the Bifrost, to Thor and Hela. If Hela managed to eject Loki from the Bifrost’s antechamber, wouldn’t she have done the same to Thor? Did Thor make it to Asgard and was now caught in a battle between the goddess of death herself? More: was he winning?—How could he be if she shattered his hammer into hundreds of useless stone splinters?  
  
_“You caused this.” Thor’s accusation was spoken like a condemnation._  
  
Loki had trouble stoking a feeling of responsibility. He was, after all, stranded on a planet of garbage. That sounded like punishment enough; it had to be. It wasn’t as if he knew that leaving Odin in his exile would lead to this, some prophecy of Ragnarok (and oh did Loki loathe _prophecies_ ). Frankly, he could let Asgard burn! What had it ever done for him? Nothing, nothing at all until Loki returned to rule it peacefully under the guise of Odin—something Thor himself ruined. All parties involved (save for yours truly) deserved what they got.  
  
He was gnashing his teeth again.  
  
Loki stooped beside a pole, peeling himself away from the unending torrent of bodies. If returning to Asgard was not in the cards, then he must decide where to from here. Obviously most keen was the need to meet with this “Grandmaster” figure, whomever he was, as from what he could tell, the Grandmaster was the owner of this motley dump and therefore the only entity alive on Sakaar that mattered. _Yes, but how?_ The denziens of Sakaar were like gnats. He doubted he could question them one by one to piece together a plan of entry.  
  
Suddenly Loki felt tired, as if the last ropes of adrenaline from his fall were now gone, leaving a husk in its wake. He rolled his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.  
  
“Yeeaaa-hhh,” went a yell from the crowd, “but I bet you don’t got one as big as _m-i-i-ine!_ ”  
  
Gods, he hated this place.  
  
Picking his head up after a moment of brief but intense lamentation, Loki noticed that the tidal wave appeared destined for _somewhere_ , not the back-and-forth flutter of a usual crowd. Almost everyone was piling north to what he could only assume was ahead towards the massive silhouette in the distance, shaped like the shadow of an enormous stadium. He recalled the ‘contest’, and how ‘contest’ and variations of were the most common talk of the horde.  
  
Beat.  
  
Loki reached for someone random.  
  
“You,” he declared. The person, covered in gauche makeup and with an awful lisp, sputtered at the sudden intrusion.  
  
“Huh?!” They pushed against Loki’s grip. He did not rescind it.  
  
“You,” he repeated. “What is the Contest of Champions?”  
  
He listened with intent to their rushed explanation, even as it sounded less akin to language and more squeaky keening. Then he let them go and off they were, back adrift.  
  
_A planet of garbage whose only claim is a gladiatorial arena for fighting to the death._  
  
Just his luck.


	2. Prong Synth

“The Melt Stick, sir?”  
  
“No, Topaz, _not_ the Melt Stick.”  
  
Topaz offered it anyway. En Dwi shooed her as one might chase a mosquito with the palm of his hand.   
  
“If I use it too much,” En Dwi continued, still shooing her long after she took it back, “then it looses its—oh, its _pizazz_. Loses the pizazz of it. Don’t want to lose that, you know? It’s got to be _the_ Melt Stick. The one that makes them go _Oh no, not the Melt Stick!_ _Please, Grandmaster, mercy—_ ”  
  
He was making flapping gestures now. “ _—mercy, mercy—_ and then I can be like, _Nope_ , and then they get melted, not the _Oh, it’s the Melt Stick._ You see?”  
  
“Sir, the contender.”  
  
En Dwi craned his head. The contender babbled something wholly unimportant, a crumpled mess on the floor. Embarrassing, actually; were they sobbing?  
  
“Oh, hey.” He laughed. “I forgot you were there.”  
  
He looked away, towards some corridor that mangled white with red along the walls in a derangement of construction. Faintly, the sound of music.  
  
“You know what. I have an, uh, a party to get to. I don’t really want to waste my time with you. I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but, you kind of broke the rules, you know, and now you’re crying all over my floor and I just _do not_ have the time for that. Okay?”  
  
The sobbing stayed steady.  
  
“Right. Well, glad we came to an understanding.” He turned to his aide. “Topaz? Do whatever you want with them, just don’t use the Melt Stick. I use the Melt Stick. Melt Stick’s my thing. Then get, I don’t know, a maid or something, clean up the mess. Kapisch?”  
  
“Understood, sir.”  
  
En Dwi clapped his hands together, eyes laureled with good humor. “Perfect! See you, little guy. Don’t break the rules, next time.”  
  
As soon as he turned the corner, the electric blast of the Melt Stick trailed behind him.

* * *

  
  
“This guy’s saying he wants audience with the Grandmaster.”  
  
“Who is he?”  
  
“Looks like some weirdo with lots of grease in his hair. Do we give it to him?”  
  
“I’m right here, you incompetents.”  
  
The levy of guardsman snapped to attention at the sound, apparently totally unconcerned with the fact until now that they were deliberating his entry in front of him. The taller one hummed, lowering his helmeted head towards Loki. He furrowed his brows, flinching. _Is he blind?_ —And then the head pulled up, the smaller one pointing some kind of spear at him.  
Loki didn’t waste a breath. “I’ve already told you two, I’m too important to be held up like this. Let me through and you may live.”  
  
The taller one chuffed. “Is he threatening us?”  
  
“I think he is.”  
  
“Do we let him through?”  
  
“Don’t know. Your call— _eck,_ ” and he was dead.  
  
“Well, I don’t think we should,” the taller one said, but by then an illusion had been cast.  
  
His treasured patience, it seemed, was at an all-time low.  
  
 _An entire coliseum just for bloodsport,_ Loki reminded himself as he passed shoulder to shoulder with a menagerie of beings, from the most mundane humanoid to what appeared to be a land-faring milliped the length of several men. From the sparse talk between “fellow” guardsmen he began to put the pieces together about this planetary wasteland.  
  
Namely, that the Grandmaster was even more of an omnipotent figure than Loki initially believed. Everything went back to the Grandmaster in some way, be it the guards’ belief that the latest contenders won’t last a day against the Grandmaster’s champion nor the Grandmaster’s talent for doing away with the stragglers, to—and this was to Loki’s disquiet—what time of night that they might embark on the Grandmaster’s prized orgy ship.  
  
 _Bloodsport **and** debauchery._ Just his luck, again.  
  
Not that Loki was a prude, but he valued _subtlety_ in the matter; the degree of which Sakaar was overt about its… everything rubbed him as being in poor taste. It was a planet defined both by its physical garbage and its emotional garbage, he decided—and Loki didn’t bother thinking about what it was going to say about him when it came time to climb up such a planet’s hierarchal ladder. If he was lucky, he could skip the middleman and siphon from the Grandmaster directly, avoiding much of the filth along the way. _A simple parley_.   
  
Where was he, anyway…?  
  
Loki scanned the area. No longer able to simply follow a horde headed for the stadium, it occurred to him that Sakaar’s building design was as obtuse as it was totally bizarre. Dead ends with seemingly no use melded into huge, empty rooms, decorated wall-to-wall with conflicting colors and decor. He assumed he was in a guard outpost, but with some walking that was no longer the case; he was now surrounded by ordinary (by Sakaarian standards) people fluttering as might flies. Did he even need his disguise anymore?  
  
He felt his fists tighten under the illusionary veneer. First Thor came back to Asgard and ruined his reign. Then they return to Odin in Midgard and he passes without any warning—then Hela, then Ragnarok, now this, stranded, stranded, stranded just as he was the first time he plummeted from the rainbow bridge… his fists drew up to his face, the illusion disintegrating inch by inch. Sharply, he exhaled, and let his hands go.  
  
“Hey, look! The Grandmaster’s going to the pre-fight party!” Someone yelled. “Come on, go with him!”  
  


* * *

  
  
Loki was unsure what he expected to see when he stepped from the entrance arch and into the “ _party chamber_ ”. Half of him expected more bodies passed out on the floor than those dancing, and the other half expected every eye in the room to go to the Grandmaster, including his own. He searched for him with something almost akin to hungry anticipation, although he wouldn’t have to look far to find what he was looking for. Or at all. The Grandmaster was in the middle, swarmed by a swelling crowd.  
  
Their eyes met. Loki’s stomach dropped.  
  
He was playing terrible, off-note music on a tinny synthesizer.  
  
 _Ummm.  
_  
“Hey,” the Grandmaster said, not to him. “Who’s he? That’s a he, right?”  
  
“Don’t know,” some voice replied. Loki kept staring.  
  
“He’s kind of cute, for an alien. Someone go get him to say hi to me. He should say hi to me. Everyone says…”  
  
Loki stood at the helm of his… instrument. “Hello.”  
  
The Grandmaster flashed him a set of totally white teeth.   
  
“Hii _iiii,_ ” he said, trying to key himself to the music. He did not.  
  
“Are you the Grandmaster?” Loki dared to say.  
  
“Huh? Of course I am! What are you, new here on Sakaar? Everyone knows me!”  
  
 _I was expecting a licentious warlord,_ Loki did not dare to say. Instead, “My apologies, but yes, I’ve newly arrived. I wanted to make contact with the leader of this planet.”  
  
“Haha, totally cool. Well, because I like you, you can call me En Dwi. I mean, you know I’m the Grandmaster. Always going to be the Grandmaster. But En Dwi is good. What are you called, pretty thing?”  
Loki tried not to wince at the attempt at flirting. “Loki.”  
  
“Loki… Uh-huh. Never heard of it. But it’s snappy. I like it. Lo-ki. Low-key? Is it a pun on low-key? That’s clever.”  
  
It wasn’t. Loki abstained from mentioning anything.  
  
“Did you see the video?” En Dwi asked suddenly, still playing his horrible music.  
  
“I beg your pardon?”  
  
“Uhh, the video. You know. The video everyone sees when they come to Sakaar.”  
  
“No…” Loki answered, tentative. “No video.”  
  
“Oh wow, no video? That’s, you know, you don’t know it yet. That’s funny.” He laughed tonelessly.   
  
Now En Dwi commanded his attention. “What?”  
  
“You don’t know it yet.”  
  
“Yes, but, what is _it?_ ”  
  
“Okay, okay, don’t sound so bitter.” En Dwi hit a high note on the synthesizer, pleased with himself for making a leitmotif on the reveal. “Well, you belong to me. You’re my property. Every arrival on Saakar is. Isn’t that cool? I think it’s cool. Cool, cool, cool.” _Zing._   
  
It took Loki every fiber of resistance in his mind to keep his body from lunging at En Dwi to the grave.


	3. Disposition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small note on chapter length: I tend to organize chapters in single story beats, so they skew smaller than what you may be used to. However, the next few (by virtue of the sheer amount of weirdness that goes on in the Contest of Champions) should be a bit bigger. Cheers!

A cold snap ripped through the whole of Loki’s being. He stood so straight that he could’ve been a column. His expression was so distant, so frosty, it hailed from a blizzard straight from the jowls of Jotunheimr.  
  
_Your property?_  
  
When was he _ever_ someone’s _property?_  
  
The hideous prong synths now a dull scratch to his ears, En Dwi said something that Loki did not care to hear. He snapped to the nearest creature that had a ghost of a resemblance to being a bartender in this debacherous pit and demanded one simple thing: the strongest drink in all of Sakaar.  
  
He downed it. Demanded another, and downed that too. Three entire twisted glasses of some splatterhouse red liquid came and went, to whom Loki demanded more still. It was only when he saw the periphery of his vision begin to flex, start to bend, that he finally left them alone, now situated on an oblong sofa with the last glass clutched tensely in his hand.  
  
For a moment, a second, a single nanometer of time, it was enough. Thor and Odin and Hela—a faraway haze, not worth considering any farther than Loki could throw them (and that he couldn’t). Sakaar itself felt incorporeal, its utter buffoon of a dictator included. Intangible. There was only him, the God of Mischief, the glass and the sofa. For the first time today, indeed at all since he was ejected from the throne of Asgard, Loki was at ease. He pressed his lips to the cup.  
  
And almost immediately spat it out when he noticed who sat beside him.  
  
“Hey,” En Dwi asked, “Are you drinking because of me? If looks could kill, I’d be dead from that look you gave me! I mean, it’s okay, I drink because of me too, but usually because I like me. And not that I want to forget me. You understand?”  
  
Loki made a sound similar to his throat being slowly squished. His eyes darted from En Dwi to the glass, back to En Dwi, then tipped the glass such that he drank it all in a single motion of the hand.  
  
“I mean, I guess we got off on the wrong foot. Lots of people have that reaction when I tell them. That’s why I made the video. So they can get it out then, and then they’re happy to see me!”  
  
The squishing was now more like a squashing. Loki passed a glance only for that he had to have.  
  
“Why… are you talking to me?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
He wanted nothing more than a fifth go on the drinks. Instead he left the glass on a frumpy-looking tableau, caught his breath, and swallowed hard.  
  
“We’ve only just met,” continued Loki, “I’ve but given you my name.”  
  
En Dwi widened to a toothy grin. “Yeah. But you’re very pretty. I think you’re interesting. So we’re talking. Do you want another drink? I can get you—”  
  
“—That won’t be necessary.”  
  
He had wanted to say yes, _dearly_ did he had want to say yes. But in the back of his mind was the knowledge that no Asgardian, certainly no _jotun_ , would have been taken down by this sugary swill longer than a minute; a waste to try and believe it’d be useful escape further than what little he exacted from it already. Were Thor here, Loki imagined he’d be crying of laughter at first taste.  
  
_If Thor were here…  
_  
Loki perished the thought.  
  
He focused on En Dwi. The man (if he was a man—things seemed to work differently on Sakaar) was nothing if not unassuming, none less so when considering his given title. The makeup was a fine touch, at least, and he did carry the hint of being older than he initially appeared. Yet, they had crossed paths for less than a day and Loki was forced to wonder at how such an eccentric, oblivious fool managed to keep Sakaar together, let alone as popularly as he had. The people in the streets spoke with such fervor about him… finally, the part where Loki was apparently his _property…_  
  
“Hey-y! Loki! Low-key! Over here! Are you listening to me? You’re supposed to listen to the Grandmaster, you know!”  
  
En Dwi was waving at him, prying Loki from the jaws of monologue.  
  
“Yes, I’m listening,” said Loki, not listening.  
  
“Well, that’s good, because I’m asking you where you come from! You look like a storied guy. Tell me something juicy. I want to know all the details.”  
  
His brows creased. “Where I come from?”  
  
_If Asgard is burning, would it matter to tell him?  
_  
Better, is he even truly _from_ Asgard?  
  
“Yes! I mean, I’ve met some cool cats around here, but you have an aura all to yourself…”  
  
He thought about it. The truth was malleable here in Sakaar, figured Loki. There was no rush to cuddle up to this moron with the truth so soon, not when he looked all but enchanted by him already (a talent Loki considered a prime achievement, trained from years at the behest of a mirror).  
  
“I travel across the cosmos. There isn’t a ‘home’ to me. I simply _am_. No realm calls for my allegiance.”  
  
“Wow.” En Dwi held his smile, milder now, staring at Loki as if marveling at the mystique. Then he nodded his head and laughed.  
  
“Really got that box of secrets going,” he mused. “I like it. You’re a fun guy, Loki, Lo-man… I wonder how deep the box is. Or maybe there’s even two boxes! Three, four! We’ll see.”  
  
Once again En Dwi had Loki’s brows piqued. What was he playing at? Did he not believe him?—But then En Dwi was facing a partygoer, talking, totally removed from Loki’s company, then stood up. Dusted himself off. Started to walk. Loki almost had the thought that they were finished before his head fell to the side facing him.  
  
“Well, _Mister Mystery_ , aren’t you going to see the arena match with me?”  
  
Here he had almost forgotten about the little word: _bloodsport._


	4. Topaz

“So, what was I saying? Oh, right, the Contest of Champions, it’s the greatest show on Sakaar… you have to see it…”  
  
Even as En Dwi’s explanation tapered off to a faint mutter in the back of Loki’s head, he kept going—that was a good thing, for Loki’s focus happened to land elsewhere, on a woman he found _familiar_ (a notion he would think a complete farce on this scrapheap of a planet). Tall, black, dark hair—not what he thought interesting. Rather that she was accosting a bartender by the eye-stalks; it eventually relented, revealing an enormous cache of alcohol behind a clear hologram. Apparently pleased, she stumbled away, carrying every bottle to the last inside a bottomless satchel.  
  
“Who is—”  
  
“Oh, Scrapper 142,” En Dwi chimed in, not missing a beat—or noticing that Loki hadn’t heard what he was saying for around fifteen minutes. “My favorite Scrapper. She brings in the best stuff. I mean the best stuff. Yeah, there’s the uh, _tiny_ fascination with the drinks. Can you blame her? Every Scrapper has a hobby. You know, when I first saw you, I thought you were one of hers. Seemed like just the thing she’d bring. She loves surprising me—”  
  
“—One of hers?”  
  
En Dwi blinked, stopped for a moment, searched Loki with his face. Then, naturally, he laughed. “Oh. Right. No video.”  
  
 _Just how much am I missing from this… video?  
_   
Did he really want to know?  
  
“Well, you see, when someone comes to Sakaar—” En Dwi held up an open hand, mimicking one of those infernal portals. His other palm, low—they slapped together. “Usually, a Scrapper comes and gets them.” His former hand pinched something invisible, then carried it along the length of his arm. “Maybe someone was slacking on the job when you came. Maybe nobody saw you. I kind of doubt that, though. You’re hard to miss. Anyway, they bring them here, to the tower, and they see the video and everything else and then they’re a contender. You get me?”  
  
 _Oh.  
_  
Loki struggled for the words. “I understand.”  
  
He put a hand on his chest. “So I’m a contender?” _Gods, don’t say y—  
_  
“Oh, heavens no! You honestly think I’d waste a pretty face like you for _that_? No, no, no. No way.  Absolutely not. And, uh, between you and me?” En Dwi nudged Loki’s shoulder, cupping fingers around his ear. “You don’t look like you could hurt a fly, anyway. Totally pointless to put you out there.”  
  
Loki caught the scowl before it chanced to stretch his lips, keeping it down with whatever he had left for politeness. Of course not… Not as if power wasn’t always so neatly evident by appearance. Not as if the God of Mischief prided himself on the weak and unassuming facade before capitalizing on it with illusions and sorcery. Why, it was as if En Dwi… _wounded his pride.  
_  
Nevertheless, he said nothing, teeth staying clenched for when they started to walk again. En Dwi had a navigation all his own, something Loki was thankful for: the idea of getting lost in Sakaar architecture with naught but him for company was a nightmare he would’ve done anything to avoid living. Not that he bothered trying to observe _how_ En Dwi managed to navigate—something told him the concept would frustrate enough without additionally attempting to decipher the inner machinations of the Grandmaster.  
  
“Hey there, Topaz.”  
  
Loki turned his head and noticed not the woman, but the enormous… lightning rod?—The enormous lighting rod that she carried.  
  
“Who’s this, sir?” She held an icy look in Loki’s direction. Were he in a more comfortable position, (or had even seen it, as he was still watching the lightning rod), he might have reflected one back.  
  
“Oh, this is—hey, introduce yourself. _Smile._ ”  
  
He tried. It came out as a halfway smirk, halfway cry for help.   
  
“Loki.” He managed _that_ at least somewhat well.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, Loki. Don’t know much else about him yet. Calls himself a ‘cosmos traveller’. Whatever that means!—We’re going to see the Contest match. This is Topaz, Loki. You can call her my, uh, lieutenant. She runs the place when I’m not. Not that I don’t run the place! But I don’t like the uh, menial stuff. I like having fun. She lets me have fun.”  
  
“Your bitch.”  
  
Beat. His attention ripped from the rod. “His _what?_ ”  
  
“The Grandmaster’s bitch,” she repeated, as if he didn’t understand to whom she had addressed.   
  
Loki pressed forward, eyes narrow as slits. “Say that again.” Already his hands dangled beside the scabbards for his knives.  
  
“The Grandmaster’s—”  
  
“Hey, hey, hey,” En Dwi interjected, “We do not use the _B_ word here. Or the _S_ word. He’s a _guest_. You’re a guest, Loki. I mean, my property, but everyone on Sakaar is, you’re a guest—”  
  
“Enjoy the game, sir,” Topaz said, disappearing down a corridor, the rod vanishing with her.  
  
Loki stood, alight with adrenaline, a knife tightly cradled in each hand. Furious, he threw one at the archway Topaz had passed, watching in dull resignation as it crumbled into fine dust. _Horrible enough he claims I’m property, then this **hag** leads with such an accusation_ , he wanted to say, a heavy huff replacing the intent. He turned to En Dwi.  
  
“Never, _ever_ , let her say that in my company.”  
  
En Dwi, surprisingly, carried a genuinely remorseful edge. “You’ll have to forgive me. Topaz is… stiff. You know. Bland. That’s why I choose her for the boring work around here. She likes the boring work. Don’t ask me how. But she has those… um, _outbursts_ , from time to time. I would threaten her with the Melt Stick, but she’s kind of the one taking it around everywhere. So…”  
  
Loki rolled his eyes.  
  
“The game?” He asked with more than a slight hint of exasperation.  
  
“Oh, yeah! The game! We should get to the game. You’re gonna _love_ it, Loki. There isn’t a better show on Sakaar.”   
  
Loki didn’t doubt it: it was an abysmally low bar to clear.


	5. Waitstaff

Sitting down against a pane of pale polycarbonate and trounced through lines of multicolor, clashing halogen, it occurred to Loki that while En Dwi argued about using “the B word,” he did not, on the other hand, retract it.  
  
There was the urge to curse. It might have even let him alleviate his incredible talent for storing tension. Yet, cursing threatened to summon the memory of that _stink_ , and just the lone thought of it had him wincing. He settled for proving otherwise—the scope of the Grandmaster’s power was then an unknown, but no matter the scope Loki thought it hamstrung from belonging to that of a bumbling idiot. It couldn’t have been _that_ difficult to exact what he wanted to then escape this cesspit of a planet… could it?  
  
He felt tempting Fate with the premise was something he was going to regret.  
  
Of course En Dwi was seated not too far from him, and of course he was blabbering on about _something_ —Loki exercised his _other_ incredible talent for ignoring everything except that which had the slightest chance at being important later—and instead used the time to examine the arena, nod towards En Dwi every now and again, and desperately wish that this was some kind of fever dream that he’d wake up from eventually on a lone asteroid; the depths of inner space had a greater appeal than Sakaar ever could.  
  
He bet that if Thor did get launched from the Bifrost as he had, he was the one that got that gift of a lone asteroid. _Bastard.  
_  
“It’s actually kind of sad, you know. You’re not going to see the Grand Champion in a while. Just had his game the other day. Great stuff. Everyone on Sakaar loves him. I love him. But, uh, I keep his games monthly most of the time, yeah? Leads into a nice hype. Crowd goes wild whenever he’s on.”  
  
Loki glanced aside. “Who is it?”  
  
“ _Ummm._ I don’t actually remember his name, see. Mostly he just shouts and stuff. Big guy. Think it starts with G. Or was it H?”  
  
He seized up. The sensation of a claw colder than absolute zero rose up his spine, freezing him completely. His mind lapsed to almost something of a record scratch.  
  
“Uh-huh,” said a weak voice.  
  
He did not ask another question about the Grand Champion. He did, however, ask for another drink.  
  
A different color this time, yellow speckled with cubes of neon blue. The waitress came armed with such a passive, glassy expression that Loki stared between the wine and at her, then tentatively took what she had offered. He preferred concluding she was some automaton than any alternative—still, unease found way to curl around his gut. Perhaps it was not favorable to accept whatever was given to him with glee on Sakaar—there were things even a jotun’s gullet couldn’t withstand without enduring some level of an intended effect. En Dwi watched him casually.  
  
“So, is this something you do often while ‘travelling cosmos’?”  
  
Loki was cavalier. “The game, or the drinking?”  
  
“Both.”  
  
He threatened to smile. “I’m not one for bloodsport,” admitted Loki. “I despise it in all its forms, actually. It’s dirty and usually the favorite of the peasantry. As for the drinking, well—”  
  
The glass tipped. “—when adequately stressed.”  
  
To Loki’s immediate amazement, the Grandmaster did not say anything in reply—instead he looked at him with an expression Loki could only describe as hung up between understanding and deeply shadowed. The sight of it emblazoned on En Dwi’s otherwise carefree figure made him almost choke on the alcohol free-falling into his throat.  
  
“Not, ah, that means bloodsport doesn’t have its place,” he hastened to add. “Just, ahem, not my type. I’m sure some educated can enjoy it too. Not to trivialize them.”  
  
So much for that _silver tongue._  
  
“I see,” En Dwi said, cutting the air as if the words were a machete. “Well, you have a way with talking. All that traveling, huh?”  
  
“Naturally.” Loki couldn’t tell if the Grandmaster accepted his apology or was considering a stoning; he decided not to stretch his neck out any farther and turned his attention to the game.  
  
It was a romp. Even in the apparently sound-resistant booth the thunder of the crowd was dizzying. Two contenders, a giant each, stalking the opposite side of the ring. Whenever they collided to throw a punch or attempt to squeeze the other into a headlock, the thunder in the stadium swelled to a tsunami.   
  
En Dwi chattered again, apparently no longer bothered by what Loki had said, but none of what he was saying was directed at him. Instead his sights were on another glass-eyed waitress, humming playfully as he caught a hand in her bullseye-like brassiere.   
  
_Ah._ Well, that’s wonderful. Loki rolled his eyes. How could anyone enjoy being seized and felt up in public—then again, if everyone in the booth except for the Grandmaster and himself were as dull as these waitresses, did it count as being ‘ _in public_ ’? He wasn’t hasty to have an answer.  
  
“Sit, sit,” he overheard En Dwi demanding. The waitress sat.   
  
Loki tried to steady his focus on the game. The giants were wrestling now, no clear victor from his point of view. It seemed the dominant one changed moment to moment. He found the violence banal to near absurdity, but it was enough of a distraction in completeness to his wine to keep him from noticing whatever was going on in the seat next to him.   
  
At least until she started giggling.  
  
His grip doubled on the wine glass. _You have to be joking._ In front of him? _Really?_ Was there any limit to Sakaar insanity?—Another question he’d rather not get answered.  
  
“Come on, don’t be shy,” Loki unfortunately heard, unable to not see it as a direct insult to his current position.  
  
The game was a blur on a drab playground now, the only thing Loki caring about being the wine and where he might get more of it. The giants like oversized children, the crowd yelling balled into white noise. Eventually, and that eventually was one beyond painful, a victor was decided. The latter giant lied motionless on navy arena sand, the former standing tall and pumping his arms to the tune of the overpowering white noise.   
  
Loki was all out of wine. This time, he cursed.  
  
“Okay, get off me.” There was a feminine whine and in turn the sound of shoving. Loki dared to turn his head.   
  
The waitress was hunched over the ground, almost entirely naked, and reaching for the mangled remains that were the rest of her clothes. However, what struck him as stranger of the two was that En Dwi was completely covered—there was not even the hint of, how do you say, _interest_ poking against the goldenrod fabric. Once the waitress was gone, it was as if nothing had happened.  
  
“Ugh.” En Dwi had his sleeve cross his nose. “I actually hate those girls. You know. They just look dumb. Well, they _are_ dumb.”  
  
Loki was quiet, noticing that the Grandmaster had an aura removed than from the one he had endured for the last few hours. Something was inexplicable, repressed, grumbling under the surface. He went for another swig and was promptly reminded that it was empty.  
  
Maybe there was more to En Dwi after all. Loki couldn’t be sure if that was a good or bad thing.  
  
The Grandmaster rose from his seat, acknowledging Loki for the first time in almost half an hour. “Are you going to come with me to the Commodore?”  
  
“Is that your suite?” Loki regretted the words instantly.  
  
“Oh, no, no.” En Dwi laughed like a crone. “God, no. It’s my ship. I always have a little party on it after a game. I love to party. Parties always get me up.”  
  
Loki considered it—he considered En Dwi’s choice of words too. At last, he shrugged.  
  
“I don’t see why not.” It would probably curry more favor, anyway. The worst of it could be that he’d have to overhear _that_ again, and Loki could handle that. _Probably.  
_  
En Dwi clapped his hands, said some nonsense, and they were off.  
  
It did not take long for the realization to land on Loki—likely for that it didn’t land on him, it clocked him in the head like a lead bar.  
  
No amount of postmortem protest changed the course. No amount of asking, nay, _begging_ the Grandmaster to just take him to a private room so that he could sleep mattered. Loki had said yes, and Loki was going to eat dirt. He made an arid, squeezing sound, a balloon being deflated.  
  
The Commodore?  
  
It was the orgy ship.


	6. Funk

There was a word otherwise ill-suited to describe Loki; with nearly every action he underwent, he would take the outcome in stride such that he could then think, plan, and move for the future than waste a breath being bothered by the past. The God of Mischief had a long line of victories and losses—ruminating on the latter would only make them stronger and more glaring, a lesson he learned only after centuries spent brooding.  
  
Now, though? There not an inch of Loki without it.  
  
You might know it as _whiplash._  
  
Oh, he was smiling: he was smiling because he didn’t know he was smiling, a drunkard’s grin dangling off his face as a thoughtless defense mechanism. True to going unnoticed, it was nevertheless difficult to avoid calling his walking with En Dwi to the Commodore anything but something of a death march.  
  
Tiredness wound itself over the entirety of Loki’s being. A private suite, hell, he’d take himself out on one of those infernal sofas strewn about the place given enough time and desperation—he wanted _out_ , out of this planet even if it meant escape only for a few heavenly hours, for Sakaar had proven itself worse than Svartalfheimr (and he was yet to pick one of those bastard elves out in a crowd). Certainly, there were one or two upsides. The inherent chaos that permeated Sakaar down to the marrow would inevitably prove useful later. The seeming lawlessness outside of the Grandmaster’s unpredictable whimsy was a (nearly) welcome diversion from the tiresome dregs of law and order that Loki had gotten too close with for comfort when he was assuming Odin’s role on Asgard.  
  
But, the rest of it? Sakaar was… there was too much to list. Dirty. Clumsy. Loud. Obnoxious. _Terrible…_  
  
Loki stopped before going further chanced at being a case of the pot calling the kettle black.  
  
Once again pried from monologue, Loki looked up and ahead, his immediate notice taken by the Commodore that for being an “ _orgy ship_ ”, it was actually quite lean—the nagging sensation that met him suggested that would not bode well. A small cadre of guards and partygoers alike were huddled under the left semi-circle wing, apparently waiting for the Grandmaster to come through and let them on. A premonition confirmed then by how they transformed into but a cloud of swarming gnats once they were close enough.  
  
Was it really so hard to slip away while everyone was distracted?—He felt a hand on his arm.  
  
“You’re cute,” a voice that was definitely not En Dwi’s said. He snapped to attention.  
  
“Thank you,” Loki said, quarter-hearted, turning his head.  
  
_Ummm._  
  
… Giant golden woman? _There’s probably worse to be accosted by._ It was around that time he realized he was smiling.  
  
“Come on, come on,” she urged him, tugging his arm roughly towards the ship. En Dwi was nowhere to be found—he’d be with almost certainty already on the bay.  
  
Loki mouthed _wait_ , presumably to weasel his way out and make a run for it now that he was emboldened by precious opportunity; he managed but a gasp as he was thrown over her shoulder, quite literally, like a sack of potatoes. It was unlikely she could even feel the hammering of protest-laden fists on her back, and neither the wheezing nor the yelling.  
  
The whiplash blossomed into full-on existential regret—it was only going to get worse, for if Loki hadn’t been keyed into it before, he was about to learn that doubting Sakaar’s ability to “get worse” could not have been any more wrong to do.  
  
A blast of synth was the first to bombard his senses as he got hauled in, the giant woman ducking underneath the open door to take herself and Loki inside. To his shock, it was in tune—En Dwi’s synthesizer blessedly had no presence on the Commodore. A dazzling lightshow played from the ceiling of the ship, entire bandolier-esque strips mounting light after light that shone almost directly in the eyes. Were Loki not already winded from the giant woman’s “handling”, he might have mentioned that the Commodore looked like less a spaceship on the inside and more a dancefloor ripped from a memory of Midgard.  
  
Naturally, he continued on with protesting. Knowing physical efforts futile, he demanded for her to put him down, even threatened that she would pay for not listening to him. She did, but not in response to what he was saying—she let him down on one of the seats of the Commodore, Loki’s behind making a hard plop, and took the side closest to him.  
  
“Heavy,” the woman said. “Heavier than you look.”  
  
Loki resisted asking a rhetorical question, instead seizing the moment to search visually for the Grandmaster. It didn’t take long to find him. Seated only some way from Loki, En Dwi was currently playing middle to a derangement of half-dressed humanoids of every color, stripe, and apparent gender. The synth overture blasting from the ship’s internal speakers switched to bubblier music, Loki himself almost unable to look away.  
  
Just how often were these games of the Contest of Champions? Was the Grandmaster doing this weekly, _every day?_  
  
His mind asked the worst of all of it: and was _this_ the main way to gain favor with him?  
  
Apparently the thought was noticed for the Grandmaster raised his head from the twisting ball of multicolor flesh and limbs.  
  
“Hey, Loki.” Recognizing his name felt like receiving a condemnation from the gods.  
  
Ruefully, “Yes?”  
  
“Wanna join in, pretty guy?”  
  
Loki couldn’t have shaken his head faster. He pointed at the giant woman.  
  
“Oh, I see. Taken. That’s a shame. Well, uh, if you two finish, come over to this side, okay?”  
  
_If you two finish?_ Loki wasn’t even—  
  
—Oh, no.  
  
Slowly, his head panned over, now registering the enormous hands wrapped around his chest and the head pressed into his shoulder.  
  
Giant golden woman.  
  
Giant golden _naked_ woman.


	7. GGNW

    Giant golden naked woman—it bore repeating—and she was cuddling Loki to point of threatening a brand new, finely powdered Asgardian-jotun ribcage.  
  
    Loki, meanwhile, considered the particulars of getting vaporized from this (im)mortal coil.  
  
    It wasn’t for that he couldn’t take feminine attention, even admit a level of attraction—the God of Mischief counted as both man and woman, his chosen partners reflecting that fluidity from gender to gender (and species to species)—but something pinched at him now, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Sakaar—all of it, every last detail, every last forgone conclusion—came crashing down. The most he managed was a defeated, resigned sigh.  
  
    While the stages of grief were flashing before Loki’s eyes: “Hey, Sue? I don’t think he’s that into it.”  
  
     _“Cute.”_  
  
    “I mean, agreed. It’s just that, well, he looks kind of like he’s searching for nonexistence. You know.”  
  
    A loud huff broke over the rancor of synth music. Gradually the pressure on Loki’s chest was lifted, then disappeared completely, ‘Sue’ standing up (not that he bothered to watch, for the newfound space was used primarily to put his head in his hands).  
  
    “Okay—off, yes, off—yes, dance with each other, I don’t really care—”  
  
    Soon enough, a different presence filled the void at Loki’s side.  
  
    The scene that played out counted itself as oddly poignant: while the ball En Dwi separated himself from frantically turned inward, synth continuing to blare from the ship speakers, he offered Loki what would become perhaps the most innocuous gesture he’d receive in the entirety of his stay on Sakaar: a gentle hand on the shoulder.  
  
    “Still searching for nonexistence?”  
  
    Belatedly, “Yes.”  
  
    “Anything to do about that?”  
  
    Sarcastically, “Yes.”  
  
    The moment started to hang and Loki felt the hand retract. He waited a while before he dared to poke his head out from his fingers. The ball in the other corner of the Commodore still ran hot, a blur of unknown flesh and limbs. Luckily, ‘Sue’ was apparently nonchalant about joining, having forgotten about him already, if the massive shape dominating half of the writhing mass was any indication.  
  
    Loki turned aside. The Grandmaster was framed almost too perfectly by…  
  
    … a ring of bubbles?  
  
    He looked up, then promptly winced as a bubble hit him square in the eye. They were raining from the ceiling.  
  
    Beat.  
  
    There were bubbles now.  
  
    Another beat.  
  
    Loki laughed.  
  
    And he laughed.  
  
     _And he laughed._  
  
    There was something so ridiculous, so comedically obscene, about the fact that he had just been accosted by a giant golden naked woman on a ship primarily used for partying and fucking on a planet marked by its partying and fucking and now there were bubbles flying from the ceiling that Loki simply couldn’t stop, he couldn’t stop laughing, maybe it was him losing it maybe it was the alcohol maybe he had gone mad for not even when he was breathless and huffing, wheezing, _cackling_ at the absurdity, the echoes of a lost, broken man, it kept going, he kept going, the bubbles were the funniest thing in the world, _Sakaar_ was the funniest thing in the world, he had never been more amused in several thousand years of life, there would never be something as funny in another thousand, another epoch, he was so certain of it and he was still laughing, basically crying now, long since fallen to the side of the seat with his whole body shaking, the Grandmaster looking at him, everyone looking at him, the bubbles continuing to fall, and it wasn’t until everything was dark, until everything was black, that Loki _finally,_ finally stopped laughing…

* * *

  
     _Ummm._  
  
    “Overdid the bubbles, maybe…”  
  
    En Dwi tilted his head. He began to process what had just happened—his guest (guest, guest, _G-U-E-S-T_ , not the B word Topaz told him earlier)—looking as if he wasn’t enjoying himself on the Commodore at all until En Dwi turned on the bubbles and, as it appeared to him now, laughed himself to death.  
  
    En Dwi put a hand on his neck. Oh. Not dead. Unconscious, though.  
  
    “I’m glad you liked them, I guess,” he told him. There was no reply.  
  
    En Dwi turned to the other group, whose partying halted when Loki’s laughter started to catch on lasting longer than a minute. He smiled at them.  
  
    “Hey, Sue?”  
  
    Sue was still naked.  
  
    “Can you help me get this guy in a room? I hear he’s heavy, and I don’t really want to call Topaz over. She hates it when I have dead or unconscious guests. We’d have forms and stuff, stuff that never gets filled out. And he’s pretty, you know, kind of gone.”  
  
    She glared, but nodded.  
  
    “Thanks. You’re a star.”  
  
    He glanced back to a motionless Loki.  
  
    “You are one really, _really_ strange guy, huh?”  
    

* * *

  
    Unfortunately, Loki woke up the next day.  
  
    The room was completely foreign as he strained to bear shimmers of light hitting him like blasts of solar heat until he pressed a hand to his forehead and dragged it down across his face.  
  
     _What… happened?_  
  
    He struggled to remember much more than vague entanglements of scenes, people and events: he knew about the Bifrost, he knew about Hela and Thor, he knew this planet could be compared to a liminal zone, but after the game there was the march and then a veil of total darkness, as if his mind was defending itself from whatever had occurred.  
  
    Loki sat up on the bed. He decided that in all likelihood, that was going to be for the best.  
  
     Well, he certainly felt _groggy_ ; one of the drinks must’ve finally got to him, something that managed to effect his jotun interior. A pneumatic hiss came from the far wall of the room.  
  
    “Oh, hey, you’re awake.”

    _Already?…_  
  
    “Yes, I am.” Loki didn’t bother looking up.  
  
    “You know, I was kind of worried for you, back on the Commodore. I think everyone was. You really burnt yourself out. I mean, in hindsight, it was interesting to watch, but. Wow. Never thought I’d hear you laugh, let alone like that. How are you feeling?”  
  
    “Tired,” Loki replied, “Albeit more on an existential than a physical level.”

    En Dwi chuckled. “Oh, I see. Still not used to Sakaar, huh?”

    With luck, he never would be. “Is there something you wanted me to do, Grandmaster…?”

    “Oh, yeah! This is your room, so that’s all sorted out. I’m sure you can redecorate if you want…”

    … Loki noticed a six-eyed boar’s head mounted on the right wall …  
  
    “…but, new day new life, you know? You should get some new clothes. Something a little less ‘ _First day on Sakaar_ ’.”

    “What’s that supposed to mean?”

    “Well, uh, Loki, if we're being honest, you kind of look like a ponce.”


	8. Uniform

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! As you may have noticed, I've edited the former chapters while working on this one. Chapter posting is probably going to be a bit more weekly now. Thank you all for your support, kudos, and comments!

“Is this your color?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Is _this_ your color?”  
  
“ _No._ ”  
  
“You’re kidding! I’m a cosmic entity, you know, and you’re telling me these are _not_ your color? But they’re all green!”  
  
“The former is sea green, the latter viridian,” said Loki, who was sipping at a glass that was, astonishingly, not alcohol. Also— _cosmic entity?_ He quickly filed that one that one away.  
  
An entire host of materials and colors were strewn about the room, the Grandmaster having a maid shift through them as one might when looking for a needle in a haystack. She presented another, barely a shade cooler than the last. _Hmm, was that a drab jade?_ With the banana-toned insert on the front of the cape, they clashed as all colors on Sakaar clashed—but now, to Loki’s intense joy, they almost… went together.  
  
It had also been several grueling hours of clothes sorting, and Loki was looking for the end.  
  
“I’ll take that one,” he said. “They look fine enough.”  
  
“You’re a hard sell.” En Dwi seemed prepared to walk out. “Green. It’s _green_. How do you get that specific with _green?_ ”  
  
_Wear green for, oh, about a thousand and a half years, give or take a century, and you would see my point,_ Loki thought, bemused at the exasperation—after yesterday, it was a catching sight to see the Grandmaster being bothered by Loki’s demands instead of the other way around. Something told him he wouldn’t be seeing from this side of the road particularly often.  
  
“Okay, take those colors away and make something out of it.” En Dwi turned to Loki. “What design did you say you wanted again?”  
  
“Something understated.”  
  
“You heard him. Go, shoo,” and off the maid hurried, the Grandmaster stepping over one of the rejected piles, surely learned by now not to get between Loki and his starving sense of fashion, and sat down.  
  
“Sheesh. You’re lucky I like you.”  
  
Well, the alternative, supposed Loki, was fighting to the death in the name of some lunatic dictator in said lunatic dictator’s arena under pretense of a ‘contest’. In comparison, giving En Dwi a hard time over a new Sakaarian wardrobe was wonderfully less physical. Loki considered mentioning that his standards were well over that than what was average for this planet—he knew better than to push his luck with this apparent _cosmic being_.  
  
Cosmic being of what, anyway? Weren’t they typically aspects, just as the gods were? It couldn’t have been sensibility, for one—  
  
En Dwi caught his stare.  
  
“You know, Loki, I have a feeling that box of secrets is more a box within a box, and a box of that box too,” said the Grandmaster. “You’ve got a lot going on underneath the skin, huh?”  
  
He mixed more lemon with his water. “You could say that. Does it interest you?”  
  
_Of course it does,_ a voice in the back of his head went. Loki had seen enough of the Grandmaster to know that he definitely didn’t give this much attention to every guest, if he gave them attention at all. Yesterday he would’ve considered that a terrible curse to endure, but now he had begun to think it was more in his favor. Loki would just have to see which buttons he could push.  
  
En Dwi, no longer annoyed, simply smiled at Loki as if to admire what he was thinking.  
  
“I know you’re a god.”  
  
And out the water in his mouth went.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Oh, come on, don’t give me that face.” En Dwi shook a finger. “You honestly think you don’t have that god dust all over you? If I shook you, you’d shed sparkles like a fairy. So! What are you a god of, sweetheart?”  
  
The nickname had a way with making Loki feel nausea. “Many things. Mischief, stories, sorcery, lies—formerly, evil—”  
  
En Dwi had procured a drink from out of nothing under his robes. “Ooh. Come on, don’t leave me _hanging,_ ”  
  
“—and, most recently, change.”  
  
The Grandmaster held his head high, humming, about to say something before the maid tumbled back in.  
  
“Here you are,” she said dispassionately to Loki, handing the outfit over. Loki set down his drink and examined it.  
  
To his surprise, it genuinely was understated, nothing like the usual that he had seen for Sakaar. But the texture of the fabric… He kneaded his brows.  
  
“Are you _sure_ this isn’t going to be dreadfully tight?”  
  
The maid’s cheeks reddened. “I spent enough hours with your measurements.”  
  
“I don’t doubt it.”  
  
“They will fit fine…” She turned away, hopped over a pile, and left with only a single look in the Grandmaster’s direction.  
  
“Not much of a ladykiller, I guess,” said a smirking En Dwi.  
  
“She was a maid,” Loki corrected. “It’s not worth the trouble.”  
  
En Dwi held his pinky out to the clothes. “You know, I get it, wear what you want, but—”  
  
Loki had already stood up to go in the other room and change.  
  
And, for the record? Dreadfully tight. Especially in the… a sarcastic smile stretched over his face, Loki himself staring at the ceiling. Of course. _Of course._ He mouthed the words a third time. At least his chest was completely covered and the inset cape properly colored. At least. It felt as if he had thought, said, penciled out that phrase a hundred times over and it had barely been over twenty-four hours. That was the deal with Sakaar: out of so many wrongs, _at least_ there were a few rights.  
  
Loki tossed his old outfit aside, primping himself from the top down and stepped out of the yellow-blue dressing cubicle.  
  
“Ooh, _fetching_. Very fetching. Is that what they say? I’m pretty sure that’s what they say.”  
  
He strained as to not laugh out loud—at this point, the ridiculous nature of the Grandmaster was quickly becoming more hilarious than grating (he had to have experienced something truly terrible last night to be having this reaction now, figured Loki).  
  
En Dwi held his drink. “So, uh, what do you think?”  
  
Pause. “A bit more… form fitting than I’m used to.”  
  
“Uh-huh. Tell me more.”  
  
_Tell me more?_ What, was the next event he was about to be dragged to a _fashion show?_  
  
“Well, ordinarily I keep my…” said Loki, pushing fingers into a familiar row of pockets… and pulled out steel.  
  
“Daggers? Oh, yeah, saw you throw one at Topaz. Didn’t say anything cause I figured she could use the message if it hit her. New design. You can thank me.”  
  
“I _conjure_ my daggers,” Loki clarified. “Sorcery.”  
  
“Heard you mention being a ‘God of Sorcery’, too.” En Dwi appeared delightfully amused by Loki’s confusion. “Go ahead, sweetheart. Conjure one.”  
  
Loki gave the Grandmaster an icy look before he stretched out his free hand, green-tinted dust forming around his fingers before manifesting… the exact make and shape of the dagger he had just pulled out.  
  
_Ummm._  
  
“See? They look great with the outfit. Way better than the ones you had before. Couldn’t even tell what the steel was on those, definitely some place far from here. Suppose you really are a ‘traveler of the cosmos’ after all.”  
  
Loki was deadly silent, staring at the daggers instead of En Dwi. _Cosmic entity._ Just what forces were really at play, here…?  
  
“Well! I have to get going. Got an, uh, _date_ with one of the Contest coordinators. Not really fun stuff. I’ll see you later. Don’t be far, sweetheart!”  
  
He sighed. Another thread for him to untangle.  
  
En Dwi stood up, drink disappearing into the same nothing it came out of, and passed by Loki, stopping to grin beside him.  
  
“Looks like I opened one of your secret boxes, huh?”  
  
Loki was about to retort—  
  
—and felt a slap.  
  
_His uniform was tightest around the ass._


	9. 142

By the time (mind, it wasn’t longer than an instant) Loki whipped around, equal parts fuming, flustered and furious, En Dwi was gone, as if he had never been.  


Beat.  


Surrounded by piles of, yes, drab jades, emeralds—what was it that he said before? _Viridian?_ —the God of Mischief at once considered screaming, screaming not unlike the screaming that ripped through him soon after falling to Sakaar, screaming so loud that all of the Nine Realms would be given no choice but to hear. That kind of screaming.  


Yet, he only imagined it—for the God of Mischief, too, realized something. Something that made the scowl melt straight off his face. No, now? Loki was _grinning_.  


_I’m alone._  


The Grandmaster had _left him alone._  


Instead of screaming with frustration, Loki almost had himself clapping with celebration. He was positively giddy. He ignored the piles of rejected clothes; he ignored the fact that he was still stuck here, on Sakaar, a proving ground for _all_ rejects of the universe; he ignored how the Grandmaster inadvertently had showed himself capable of some kind of teleportation, he was _free_! He all but pirouetted his way out. Free at last! Free at—  


Free at last, while a wall of alcoholic stench rose to embrace him no sooner than when he broke headway on the door.  


Specifically the stench. A fist, on the other hand, was shoving him.  


“ _You._ ”  


That dream of his shattered into thousands of small, tiny pieces.  


“I’m sorry?” Loki still tailed around a half-smile, unwilling to let the hope fade so easily. He looked down.  


“You know who you are. The new Scrapper, aren’t you? I saw you all but making out with the Grandmaster last night.”  


_The woman from before…?_  


“Believe me, I have had nothing to do with the Grandmaster’s lips,” said Loki. “Frankly, only moments before I was about to have a party that he had well and truly left me alone, just now. Are you sure you don’t want an invitation?”  


The woman, Scrapper 142 as he remembered now, only scoffed. “I would take you up on that offer, Lackey—”  


“ _Loki._ ”  


Without missing a beat, “— _Lackey_ , but I’m kind of scheduled out for the rest of the day. I’m sure you know how it is. I’m here only to give you a warning.”  


Loki was incredulous. “It’s the alcohol, isn’t it, your schedule. Do you know how terrible it makes you smell?”  


She paused. Smiled at him, whistled, and then clubbed him with the end a bottle.  


“Ow.” His voice cracked from the ground.  


Scrapper-142 stepped him over, looking at him with restrained interest. “Oh, huh. I was right after all. You _are_ an Asgardian.”  


Loki muttered unintelligible, definitely in the mold of a curse, as he wiped away smeared blood from his forehead. Gods in the nine, what was this woman’s _problem_? It wasn’t as if he had insulted her—how does one make an insult of _the truth_?—and she decided to club him? He sat up, groaning.  


He wasn’t given the edge. “Just wanted to make sure there, Lackey. Thought for a second you could’ve been some android with a loose interpretation of the Allspeak.”  


Loki refused to listen. “How am I an Asgardian for taking a bottle to the head, wench?”  


“Your choice—the frilly clothes until now, the _I am a god, kneel before me lest I get a bottle to head_ manner of speaking, or the fact you didn’t question me right now about the Allspeak? I could go on all day.” She stood up at full height. “But that’s not important. I simply had a thought. Anyway, the warning.”  


He was almost shouting now. “The Allspeak?! How would you know about the Allspeak, you simpleton! How do I know that you aren’t speaking to me in the same way?”  


“Me?” She pointed at herself. “I’m speaking English. You’re speaking moron.”  


Loki crawled his way back onto his feet, about ready to unleash knife after knife into this woman’s gullet, interrupted only by the hard light hologram thrown into his face.  


“Coordinates from _here_ ,” said she, pointing her index at one angle and her thumb in another, “to _here_ on the reception dock are my territory. If I catch you picking up someone from here, you’ll regret it. If I catch you breathing around here, you’ll regret it. You’ll regret it so much you’ll wish you got the Melt Stick. Any questions, Lackey?”  


Loki raised a finger. “Just one. You may know I’m an Asgardian, woman, but you seem missed the part where I’m not a part of your roving band of… what do you call yourselves? Scrappers? Slavers, more like—I would never debase myself with the idea. I’m here because I’ve no choice but to play along if I’m ever going to see another Asgard sunrise. So, I ask again: _do you know how terrible it makes you smell?_ ”  


At first, Loki was so smug that his smirk stretched ear from ear, certain that he had showed this mongrel of a woman up, that she’d admit defeat and leave him to a solitude he had spent the last twenty-four hours fighting near to the death for. But none of what he thought would happen happened—instead, she stared at him, blinked once, twice, three times—and then started howling with laughter.  


“Oh, oh _gods_.” Words punctuated by her chest shaking with the force of her amusement, it was only until Loki’s face had fallen completely that the scrapper regained enough composure to stand up straight and speak in coherent sentences. She wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled him in.  


“I’m going to let you in on a secret, Lackey, so you’d best have open ears for this one,” she whispered. “The Grandmaster can hear everything that you say in this tower, he can hear everything you _think_ in this tower, he knows everything you’ve ever wanted and will ever want. He’s as old as this universe. And you know what he likes to do in his old age? Play games. Play with his contenders in the Contest of Champions, play games with the people of Sakaar, and he’s playing one _with you_.”  


She let him go, pushing him away roughly enough such that Loki stuttered to find his step. The scrapper waved at him as she turned around.  


“So no,” she said behind her, “you might not be a contender. You might not be a scrapper. But you have to be something—so you best get used to those lips of his. Because you’re his bitch.”  


She briefly looked back. “And Asgard? I would put that behind you. You won’t be seeing Asgard in the next... oh, millennium.”


End file.
